When Is The U.S. Election? A Brief Explainer How America Votes

The end is near — well, at least it is for this latest iteration of the U.S. election cycle.

This year, Americans will head to the polls on Nov. 8 — following a long tradition of election days being held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, every four years.

There are two main candidates vying to be the 45th president of the United States, though Green and Libertarian party representatives are also on the ballot in many states.

U.S. presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton listen to a question from a member of the audience during their presidential town hall debate at Washington University in St. Louis on Oct. 9. (Photo:Saul Loeb/Reuters/Pool)

Recent polls suggest Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton continues to maintain her lead ahead of Republican Party candidate Donald Trump. But how big or narrow the space between the two varies according to each pollster.

For example, three weeks before election day, an MSNBC poll suggests Clinton to be ahead of Trump with an 11-point lead. But polling from the Washington Post/ABC News released the day before suggests the former secretary of state to be ahead of the real estate mogul by only four points.

Lesser-known candidates such as Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson and the Green Party's Jill Stein are also on some ballots, but they have been polling with single-digit support.

How does one become president, anyway?

There are some minimum constitutional requirements for presidential candidates: they must be natural-born citizens, at least 35 years old and be a U.S. resident for 14 years.

One of the quirks of the U.S. system is that there is no independent body equivalent to Elections Canada to oversee and conduct federal general elections.

Each state legislature is responsible for regulating its voters.

A demonstrator waves an American flag on Dec. 1, 2000 outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington,D.C. (Photo: Justin Lane/Liaison)

To complicate matters, winning the popular vote doesn’t determine who wins the presidency. The drama surrounding the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore is an example of just that.

Despite winning the popular vote, Gore lost the presidency after a close count of votes forced the Supreme Court to intervene and decide who would win Florida’s electors — and the presidency.

Wait, what are ‘electors’?

When registered American voters cast their ballots on Nov. 8, they determine which candidate receives their state’s electors.

This system is in place today thanks to the country’s founding fathers, who decided it would be a satisfactory compromise that the president be elected by popular vote as well as Congress.

The number of electors varies between states, and is determined by how many members the state has in Congress (House of Representatives and Senate). It’s winner-take-all in 48 states.

How electoral votes are distributed across America:

So for example, if one candidate wins a majority in, say, California, he or she would take all of the state’s 55 electors.

The next president of the U.S. will be determined by who wins a majority of electoral votes — 270 is the magic number — in the Electoral College.

Also on HuffPost:

Close



Cool Things You Didn't Know About U.S. Presidents

of





Contrary to popular belief, the country's first president had dentures made of gold, ivory, lead, and animal teeth.

As a young boy, John Adams would often skip school, choosing instead to spend his time hunting and fishing.

Jefferson founded the university in 1819 on land that once belonged to eventual President James Monroe. Jefferson is the only president to have ever founded an institution of higher learning.

After finishing his undergraduate degree in 2 years, James Madison stayed at the university for an additional year, making him the Ivy League institution's first graduate student.

Because of his prominent support for the colonization of Liberia, the country decided to name their capital city, Monrovia, after James Monroe.

Adams was known for his early morning dips in D.C.'s main waterway, always in the nude.

The parrot had to be removed from President Jackson's funeral because it wouldn't stop swearing.

Supposedly, President Van Buren popularized one of the most commonly used phrases to date: "OK", or "Okay". Van Buren was from Kinderhook, NY which was also called "Old Kinderhook". His support groups came to be known as "O.K. Clubs" and the term OK came to mean "all right".

During his brief tenure as President, Harrison had a pet billy goat with him at the White House.

During his presidency, Tyler often played violin at parties to entertain guests at the White House, and he actually aspired to be a concert violinist.

Polk, probably aware that many other politicians desired to run for the office, made an explicit campaign promise that if he was elected president, he would leave after 4 years, a promise that he kept.

Zachary Taylor's nickname was "Old Rough And Ready", which he acquired from admiring soldiers while he was fighting in the Seminole War.

Though she was only about 2 years older than him, Millard Fillmore's first wife Abigail was actually his teacher while he was a 19-year-old student at the New Hope Academy.

He instead affirmed it, placing his hand on a law book rather than the Bible.

James Buchanan was the only president to never marry, instead remaining a bachelor his entire life.

When Abe Lincoln moved to New Salem, Illinois in 1831, he ran into a local bully named Jack Armstrong. Armstrong challenged Lincoln to a wrestling match outside of Denton Offutt's store, where Lincoln was a clerk, and townspeople gathered to watch and wager on it. Lincoln won.

He reportedly put back a significant amount of whiskey beforehand and was noticeably drunk during his speech.

The 18th President Of The United States was given a $20 speeding ticket for riding his horse too fast down a Washington street.

During his presidency, Rutherford B. Hayes banned alcohol from the White House, allegedly for political reasons as he tried to gain support from anti-alcohol Prohibitionists.

Not only was he the first president to be both righty and lefty, but it was said he could write a sentence in Latin with one hand and write it in Greek with the other hand.

Not only was Chester A. Arthur a very sharp dresser (he owned over 80 pairs of pants) but he often took late night strolls around D.C. with friends, not returning home until 3 or 4 in the morning.

When Grover Cleveland's law partner Oscar Folsom died, Cleveland became the girl's legal guardian. Frances Folsom was 11 years old at the time. Oddly enough, ten years later, they got married at the White House. She remains the youngest First Lady in the history of the United States, having been just 21 when they married.

Benjamin Harrison was the sitting president when electricity was first installed in the White House. However, he was scared of being electrocuted and refused to touch the light switches.

Since Cleveland is the only president to ever serve two non-consecutive terms, he warrants two slides. While he was president, doctors discovered that Cleveland had a cancerous lesion in his mouth, and they had to remove most of his upper-left jaw as a result. A prosthodontist then installed an artificial jaw made of vulcanized rubber. Cleveland kept the surgery a secret, fearing public concerns over his health, and the entire operation took place on his friend's yacht.

William McKinley was the first presidential candidate to campaign using the telephone.

In his early childhood, Teddy Roosevelt suffered from very severe asthma. Because there were no inhalers or special treatments for asthma at the time, he was often sick as a young boy. However, he began to regularly exercise in order to combat the illness and, aside from the occasional asthma attack, he eventually overcame it.

After leaving office, William Taft became the only ex-president to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, effectively becoming the only person to serve as the head of two branches of government. In doing so, he swore in both Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover to the presidency. (On an unrelated note, he also lost 150 pounds after leaving office.)

To date, he's the only president to hold a doctorate degree, making him the highest educated president in the history of the United States. He was awarded the degree in Political Science and History from Johns Hopkins University. He also passed the Georgia Bar Exam despite not finishing law school.

Harding really like to gamble, although it seems he wasn't very good at it. In one poker game, he bet the White House china collection and lost it all in one hand.

Calvin Coolidge had a morning ritual in which someone rubbed Vaseline on his head while he ate breakfast in bed.

Herbert Hoover moved his family to China before becoming President, and he and his wife learned to speak Mandarin Chinese fluently. They would speak the language around the White House to prevent others from understanding them.

Late one night at a dinner party, President Franklin Roosevelt regaled guests with a premise for a mystery novel. Magazine editor Fulton Oursler was in in attendance, and he hired some mystery writers to flesh out the premise to a novel, which was then adapted into a movie, "The President's Mystery." FDR received a "story by" credit.

Before becoming the President of the United States of America, Harry Truman owned a haberdashery business (a men's outfitter), which went bankrupt in 1921.

As a freshman in high school, Dwight Eisenhower injured his knee, and the wound caused an infection that doctors feared could kill him. They recommend the leg be amputated, but Eisenhower loved playing sports so much that he refused the operation, and he somehow made a miraculous recovery.

John F. Kennedy's application to study at Harvard was fairly unimpressive by today's standards. Not only that, but his own father, a Harvard alum, gave him a pretty underwhelming recommendation, saying that young Jack was "careless and lacks application."

President Johnson was famous among White House staffers for having no shame about asking people to follow him into the bathroom to continue conversations as he relieved himself.

While in the Navy, Richard Nixon noticed that his friends were winning money in poker games. Always the opportunist, Nixon had the best poker player in his unit teach him how to play the game. Within only a few months, Nixon had won around $6,000 in poker games, which he used to fund his first congressional campaign.

In the 1940's Gerald Ford did a bit of modeling and even posed on the cover of "Cosmopolitan". His wife Betty was also a dancer and fashion model, who signed with the John Robert Powers modeling firm to finance her dance education.

When he was younger, Jimmy Carter took over and ran his family's peanut farm. As a tribute to his past, he had a giant peanut-shaped balloon in his inaugural parade.

In 1954, Ronald Reagan's acting career was going so badly that he took a gig as a Las Vegas stand-up comic for a few weeks.

In high school, Bush was the captain of both the varsity baseball and soccer teams, and he played as a forward on the school's basketball team.

Clinton took home the 2004 Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album For Children along with Mikhail Gorbachev and Sophia Loren for their narration on the Russian National Symphony's "Wolf Tracks and Peter and the Wolf". Then in 2005, he won the Best Spoken Word Grammy for the audiobook of "My Life". His wife, Hillary Clinton, also won a Best Spoken Word Grammy for the audiobook of 1997's "It Takes A Village".

As a high school student, in addition to playing baseball, George W. Bush was the school's head cheerleader. He would often organize exuberant pep talks and skits during weekly assemblies.

President Obama collects "Spiderman" and "Conan The Barbarian" comic books, and has even read every "Harry Potter" book.